Staff directory

Massimiliano Virgilio

Biology
Invertebrates

InsectMOoD

Insect Museum Open -omic Database

InsectMOoD aims at promoting the genotyping of Museum vouchers as a routine procedure to preserve and valorize the genomic information associated to the collection specimens. This approach relies on the archiving of “genomic vouchers” as a valuable complement to the archiving of morphological and digital vouchers. We will provide a test-case for the creation of an insect genomic collection (in addition to the morphological and digital collections) as an open-access and economically affordable repository of genomic resources. In this initial phase, we will focus on hoverflies (Diptera, Syrphidae) and “true” fruit flies (Diptera, Tephritidae), two taxon groups for which RMCA has considerable taxonomic expertise, with the idea of developing a decision map that could also be used for the large scale genotyping of insect collections. The optimization of experimental protocols and the collection of the genomic data will be coordinated by the Joint Experimental Molecular Unit (JEMU) of RMCA and RBINS.

Principal investigator:

  • Massimiliano Virgilio
  • Dates:

    2021 2022

    External collaborators:

    Vangestel Carl - RBINS
    Sonet Gontran - RBINS